1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to control for registering a log of an image forming apparatus on the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been developed a job management method for efficiently managing a job history (job log) performed in an image forming apparatus such as a printer, a scanner, a facsimile, a copying machine, and a multifunction printer (MFP) integrating these machines. One method for collecting a job log is to install an application enabling transmission of a job log in an image forming apparatus, and cause the image forming apparatus itself to transmit the job log, as discussed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-166176.
Another method for collecting a job log is to cause, for example, a server computer in a network to acquire a job log of each job performed in various image forming apparatuses from the image forming apparatuses.
According to conventional methods, job log registration is performed in such a state that an image forming apparatus side, which transmits a job log, and a server side, which registers the job log, maintain communication therebetween (in synchronization with each other) when the job log is registered. In recent years, the cloud computing system technique and the Software as a Service (SaaS) technique have started to be used as a system configuration in which a server computer side is in charge of various kinds of processing.
The cloud computing technique utilizes many computing resources to distribute data processing among them, so that a large number of requests can be processed simultaneously. Hereinafter, the term “instance” will be used to collectively refer to an entity of one processing which offers a function with use of computing resources.
Consider such a configuration that a job log is registered from, for example, a jog log collection server which collects a job log from an image forming apparatus, or an image forming apparatus to a server computer group which constitutes a cloud. Hereinafter, the term “client” will be used to collectively refer to a job log collection server and an image forming apparatus which register a job log to a server computer group.
If a client and a server computer group are in synchronization with each other to register a job log, like the conventional job log registration methods, an instance is occupied from the start to the end of the registration processing. In addition, conventional job log registration is performed within an intranet, and therefore a system side can know the number of clients. As a result, less stressful job log registration is realized by setting up the schedule of jog log registration timing.
However, once job log registration has been started to be performed in an Internet environment, it has become impossible for a system side to know when and how much access is coming from clients. Therefore, this system may have such a situation that the server computer side receives registration requests from a large number of clients at the same time. The cloud computing technique utilizes many instances and can process requests from a large number of clients at the same time by distributing data processing.
However, realization of a job log collection system under the cloud computing technique requires many instances to maintain running for a long time so that the server computer side can maintain a stable operation even when a plurality of clients tries access thereto at the same time. The cloud computing technique is characterized by its ability to freely use many resources by freely setting the number of instances, but this leads to such an issue that a user is charged according to how many hours the instances are running, and an increase in the number of instances results in an increase in the operational cost.